Country music master Shaver stirs the heart

It was about an hour into Billy Joe Shaver's performance Saturday night in FitzGerald's in Berwyn when the Texas songwriting legend finally acknowledged what most of the crowd already knew.

With his band standing silently around him and the audience rapt with attention, Shaver sang "Star In My Heart," a song he'd written for his son and longtime guitarist Eddy while he was battling the heroin addiction that ultimately killed him two New Year's Eves ago.

"Though we're many worlds apart, I'm still your friend," the father sang to his fallen son with a deep, foggy voice and a melody as pretty as a lullaby.

It was an especially poignant example of Shaver's art, of the way he's turned a troubled life into one of the greatest songbooks in country music.

Shaver isn't a household name, but the home of every country music fan probably has his music in it, whether on a copy of "Honky Tonk Heroes," the classic early-'70s Waylon Jennings album made up almost entirely of Shaver's compositions, or on records by the numerous other singers who also have covered his songs.

Shaver was making up songs by the time he was 5 and, at 63, he's still writing and recording. Last month he released a new CD, "Freedom's Child," and he proudly began his set with a long string of selections from it.

The new songs weren't equal to the plainspoken poetry of Shaver's best work, but there was plenty to enjoy in the bawdy ZZ Top-style rocker "That's What She Said Last Night," the fiddle-laced tear-in-beer ballad "Drinkin' Back," and the sweet nostalgia for childhood days on the honky-tonk shuffle "Corsicana Daily Sun."

Shaver performed with good cheer, frisky enthusiasm and bawdy humor. Even singing his classics for the thousandth time, he brought a preacher's fervor and a prophet's authority to his bluesy melodies.

He made his tale of a botched suicide attempt, "Ragged Old Truck," a riotous roof-raiser, then commanded the crowd's hushed attention with a gorgeous, gentle rendition of "When The Fallen Angels Fly."

These quieter moments best suited his new band. During the nearly two decades that Shaver performed with his son, Eddy's Godzilla-size blues-rock riffs drove the music, but in his absence, the songs were set to more subtle arrangements.

Drummer Lisa Pankratz gave the songs a surging, swinging momentum, aided by Brad Fordham's loping bass lines. Guitarist Jamie Hartford--son of the late banjo and guitar great John Hartford--played chiming fills and chattering solos, and Bobby Brown colored the songs as he switched among guitar, fiddle, mandolin and harmonica.

For all this fine musicianship, the band's sound wasn't large or strong enough to match up to Shaver's voice and presence. At times, it was impossible not to notice that Shaver needs a sidekick who can hold his own alongside him.